10 Movie Franchises That Wasted Their Perfect Ending

The quality of the X-Men franchise has been all over the map, and though many decried the existence of threequel X-Men: The Last Stand and spin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the series was brought back to prominence with 2011's prequel X-Men: First Class.

But it's First Class' sequel, X-Men: Days of Future Past, which really felt like a franchise-ending event - in melding the prequel and sequel eras of the franchise for a blockbuster in which they joined forces to prevent a future catastrophe.

And it was brilliant - arguably the very best X-Men movie even, because it allowed Bryan Singer to basically course-correct the franchise by erasing the things he didn't like out of it, namely large chunks of The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine.

By film's end, the Sentinels' threat to the X-Men and humanity had been stopped, and the status quo of the first two X-Men movies had been basically restored. It felt like a loop being closed off in a totally final way - save for that post-credits Apocalypse tease.

And of course, Days of Future Past's success simply ensured the franchise kept chugging along, with sequels X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix ultimately falling flat with fans and critics who were categorically in the throes of X-Men fatigue.

2017's Logan effectively combatted this with its grittier, more stripped-down approach, but given that it's more of a far-flung tangent to the blockbuster X-Men movies, and was followed up by Dark Phoenix, it provided only temporary respite.

At least with the X-Men now in the hands of Marvel Studios, we can all finally draw a line under Fox's X-Men era and look to what's coming next.